If you work with journal articles, you probably have opinions about retractions and expressions of concern—and the lack of standardized ways to communicate them to readers. You may not know that NISO recently launched a new working group to develop guidelines for exactly that!
Launched in summer 2022, the new CREC working group is charged with developing Recommended Practice guidelines in response to this question:
Once a decision is made to retract, to withdraw, or to publish an expression of concern by an appropriately authorized organization, how do the scholarly communications ecosystem and other information consumers become aware of and share information about the status of the original object?
To get the best comprehensive set of perspectives, the group is made up of representatives from the publishing, library, research, vendor, and technology sectors of our industry, and includes members with expertise in ethics, data quality, metadata handling, editorial work and editing tools, abstracting and indexing, and more.
The Recommended Practice guidelines created by the working group will
- Describe the stakeholder groups and their responsibilities
- Identify the metadata necessary to communicate retracted research
- Address how to disseminate retraction notices and expressions of concern
- Be consistent with existing guidelines on retractions from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the Council of Science Editors (CSE)
Given the magnitude of the retracted research problem, this work is a vital part of maintaining and improving research integrity, and we’re proud to have Atypon staff and community members (American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Society for Microbiology, Elsevier, IEEE, Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis Group, Wiley) on the team!
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Enthusiastic and effective collaboration is one of our industry’s greatest strengths. Cross-industry collaborative initiatives are key to much of what we do, and those initiatives depend on the work of skilled and dedicated volunteers. Our whole industry benefits from organizations like SSP, ALPSP, NISO, and C4DISC and the work they do.
But contributing to collaborative projects is great for the participants, too! By participating in committees, task forces, working groups, and discussion groups (like our Atypon Community Interest Groups), you can broaden your industry knowledge, meet new people, and gain new skills.